Winnipeg Cultural Capital of Canada

Michael Van Rooy

Michael Neelak Van Rooy is an author, administrator, and teacher. He has written three books in the critically acclaimed Monty Haaviko thriller series set in Winnipeg beginning with An Ordinary Decent Criminal(2005) published by Turnstone Press. In 2006 it won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Author. It is published in Germany by Verlagsgruppe Lubbe as Ein gewohnlicher Verbrecher and is being released in the United States through Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books in August of 2010. A film version is in pre-production with Winnipeg’s Far Point Films and Big Mind Productions.

The second book in the series, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Criminal, was published in Canada in 2008 and is due out in the U.S. in 2011. The third in the series, A Criminal to Remember,will be out by the end of June 2010.

In 2009 Michael received the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. He has been shortlisted for both the Margaret Lawrence for Fiction and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.

Michael’s short fiction and articles have appeared in The Toban, Swerve, The Minstrel, and Prairie Fire. He has written and performed material for CBC radio’s Definitely Not the Operaand wrote a segment of the Ginger’s Walkplay at the 2009 Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

Professionally Michael is the Program Coordinator for the Writers’ Collective for Professional and Developing Writers, a mentor for the Arts and Cultural Industries Fiction program, the Publicist for the THIN AIR Winnipeg International Writers Festival and the Administrator for the Canadian Mennonite University School of Writing. He is also the Vice-President of the Board of Directors of Prairie Fire Press.

Michael lives in Winnipeg with his wife and three children. A fourth book in the Monty Haaviko series is due out in 2012.